Use Chatbots for Lead Generation

The world has only just begun to discover chatbots. With consumers demanding 24-7 service for assistance, online businesses are finding them to be a valuable and cost-effective tool.  

Chatbots are able to answer customer questions round-the-clock, helping businesses to deliver better customer experiences and reduce their operational costs in the process. But that’s not all.

Use chatbots to improve the customer experience and generate leads.

Leading-edge companies are finding chatbots are effective in growing their sales pipeline, especially when used in combination with other marketing tools.

They can stimulate sales by increasing lead flow. It’s all about getting people from an algorithm to an inbox. 

Remember the great Facebook Outage of 2021? Facebook and Instagram were down for 7 hours. No posts, groups, likes, or shares for almost a full workday. It was devastating not only for users but also businesses that advertise on those social media giants and depend on them for sales.

The convergence of social media messenger platforms and chatbot technology is becoming a positive trend.

Want to know what the people with email lists thought of the outage? Nothing. They didn’t care. They queued up an email to their list, hit “send” and watched sales come in. 

So, what’s this all mean? Chatbots are the bridge between social media and email lists.

Your chatbot can work non-stop to bring in new sales by starting conversations with preset questions your ideal customer might already have. The questions can be about your company or products and drive prospects closer to pulling the trigger on a purchase.

Also, your chatbot can encourage people to share your posts which is an easy way to boost traffic and gain followers. Let’s take a look at a case study of a recent chatbot campaign.

Chatbots can have a positive impact on user engagement.

Case Study — Chatbot Campaign for a Small Business in the Vegan Food Industry

The client was an InstaGram influencer in the raw vegan food niche. She had 256,000 followers. She was relatively new to e-commerce and only had a few products to sell, some ebooks and a video series. The client also had some affiliate products that she promoted for easy sales. Her IG handle is @pureveganfood. Target market is vegans and raw food vegans.

When a company targeting vegans wanted to build its customer base, a chatbot proved to be a cost-effective solution.

The client decided to do a giveaway. The prize was something she knew her followers would find valuable — a top-of-the-line juicer worth $550. Because the giveaway was “gamified,” people were encouraged to share the IG post to get another entry in the giveaway. This generated even more followers and traffic to her page.

By offering an incentive of blenders, something vegans would value, as a contest prize, the company attracted many new customers.

Step 1: Using ManyChat we set up a simple giveaway to create a subscriber list.

The giveaway was an IG post asking people to comment a keyword.

The comment keyword triggered the automation.

The giveaway stood out from the herd.

Everyone else was using the usual – Follow this page, like this post, and tag 3 friends method.

Using a giveaway promoted through a chatbot was surprisingly effective.

We made it ultra-simple to get into the giveaway and removed all the friction.

People only had to take one action to enter the contest. (Comment “PRIZE”)

Step 2: We gave incentives to give more contact information (email address)

We asked people to provide their email addresses to get another chance to win the contest.

86% of people said YES to providing their email address which gave us a lot of list building for the client.

The money is in the list… but only if it’s the list YOU own!

Step 3: We gave the incentive to share the giveaway post.

This was to generate more traffic and more subscribers.

We asked people to share the link to the giveaway to get another chance to win the contest.

76% of people said YES to sharing the IG contest post.

This generated even more traffic and subscribers to the client.

A simple but creative chatbot sequence made visitors take notice of the giveaway and respond in a positive way.

Because we asked 2 questions:

1. Can we have your email address?
2. Will you share this contest post?

There were 4 possible outcomes:

1. Yes to email, yes to sharing
2. No to email, yes to sharing
3. Yes to email, no to sharing
4. No to email, no to sharing.

The most popular outcome (by far) was #1.

Most people opted to give an email address and share the giveaway post.

Step 4: We gave an incentive to go to the eCommerce store and do some shopping.

By providing a limited-time promo code during the message sequence, people had a reason to go and shop now.

This resulted in a 6% CTR rate for the link to go and use the promo code.

No fake scarcity or urgency because the promo code was only good for 48 hours.

Tying the chatbot to the vegan company’s Instagram account greatly expanded its online following.

Step 5: We used the 24-hour window to send a follow-up message to use a limited-time promo code.

With a little automation magic, we had a 23-hour delay in place and then a final message.

This contained a reminder to go and use the promo code before it expired.

More scarcity and urgency and that link had a 7% click-through rate.

Good luck getting that with email marketing

Final Results

Every message sent in the automation sequence had a 100% OPEN RATE!

The client sold 6 $550 juicers with her affiliate link that was part of the chatbot sequence. That’s impressive considering the cost and that most people who entered the context sat back and waited to see if they’d win and get one for free.

The open rates and click-through rates (CTR’s) were high because the bot was well made (of course) and people are conditioned to open and engage with messages on their phones.

Chatbots can be used on their own or in combination with other marketing tools such as social media.

The client felt the chatbot sequence was extremely helpful. It not only generated sales but also greatly expanded her following. She now has a much bigger audience to which she can market her products.

Run a giveaway using this combination chatbot and IG strategy if you want to make sales while building your list of subscribers. But the vegan food niche client and its contest is just one example. Get creative with chatbots and you’ll soon discover what an amazing tool they are for connecting with your target audience.

Want to know more? Contact us to explore the exciting possibilities using chatbots.

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